J2SE

This blog entry should really be titled, "J2SE 5.0 updates, or the lack of them". I've read Graham's blog entry about J2SE 5.0 updates a couple of times now and I still don't understand why you wouldn't want to push out minor updates via the consumer java.com website. The end result of this is that J2SE 5.0 Update 2 is available from java.com, while Update 3 is available from the java.sun.com...

I just got bitten by the collections framework. I always thought that the Collections.unmodifiableX() methods returned an unmodifiable copy of the supplied collection, like a shallow copy. This is useful for getter methods where you want to return a copy of a collection to a client class so they can't directly alter the contents of that collection. This enforces encapsulation and ensures that...

I popped down to the JSIG today, the topic of which was Eclipse. Unfortunately I had a 2pm meeting so could only stay for the first presentation by Berthold Daum (author of Eclipse for Java Developers) which was an overview of Eclipse, SWT and plugin development.
The first part of the session took a look at Eclipse itself, and Berthold gave a good overview of the tool, the workbench, the...

I was putting TrackBack support into Pebble the other day and the found that the technical details of a TrackBack involve sending a HTTP POST request to the remote server. I've implemented HTTP POSTs before using the classes in the java.net package, but rather than write all this code again, I thought that I'd take a look at Jakarta Commons HttpClient. What can I say ... this is another top...

One of the only websites that I can access from the client site that I'm on is the IBM site, and I must admit that it's not on my list of Java related sites that I regularly visit. So, scanning through some of the forums I came across this thread about the overhead of performing object casting in Java. Interesting, and something that I've never really thought about before. I can certainly see...

There's been some interesting activity in the Bunkhouse Porch recently. Douglas Dunn has just released the 2nd volume of his Mastering The Fundamentals of the Java Programming Language ... for free! His first book, Java Rules was rated very highly and apparently this is even better.
I said the same thing yesterday about Mac OS X for Java Geeks - this is not your normal Java book. Instead,...

I've just reviewed this book for the JavaRanch Bunkhouse and thought that I would share it via my blog...
I’ve had a PowerBook for about three months now and I thought that I had Java on Mac OS X figured out. How wrong could I be! First of all, it’s worth pointing out that Mac OS X for Java Geeks by Will Iverson is not your normal Java book. It doesn’t teach you how to use Java, and it doesn’t...

I'm currently reading (and reviewing for JavaRanch) Mac OS X for Java Geeks by Will Iverson and I'm surprised at how good the integration between the core Java platform and Mac OS X really is. Okay, I knew that Apple ships JDK 1.3 and 1.4 along with OSX, but I never realised that you could build a Java application and package it up to look like a regular native app wihout running your code...